The Anime Of 2023

Have I ever been this punctual before?

Well, you know the drill. I have made my misgivings on the current state of the medium and better alternatives evidently clear on here and 2023 was the year I took those options seriously. I believe my letterboxd account has clocked about 120 movies last year, whereas my seasonal anime count for the last year has shrunk to… nine. Nevermind making a 3×3 with the stuff I considered somewhat worthwhile, I‘d just barely be able to make a 3×3 with the stuff I merely watched. Which would defeat the purpose.

As such, I have changed the format of this kind of post a bit. No more 3x3s. This is the new Slim Edition. Also, each series I finished will now be given its own headline and screenshot. The luxury of having watched so little.

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16bit Sensation: Another Layer

We‘ve started out with a weird one. 16bit Sensation: Another Layer is an adaptation of a doujin work by the writer of TWGOK about making eroge in the 90s. Except it‘s mostly an anime original story on 2023 time traveller Konoha, slightly jaded about the dying state of eroge and riveting state of gacha, who is transported into said era to create the greatest eroge of all time. That is certainly a way to adapt something, drawing inspiration from the vast wealth of knowledge about tech and industry details of the past while also providing commentary on the sorry state of the present. The characters are, for the most part, likable and the time travel shenanigans and industry practices appropriate but the anime does have an issue of trying to bite off more than it can chew when it introduces grandiose subplots that have no bearing but push the characters we want to see grow through the journey out of the story in order to… not particularly say anything? You could cut out two episodes from this anime to dedicate it to the characters and plot we actually care about and still have some commentary on AI in art that admittedly never really went past “Human passion is important!“ Regardless, for willing to be different and somewhat ambitious and having enough insight into what an adaptation can be rather than just slavishly adhering to the source material, I still heed it my respect. Decent.

Golden Kamuy Season 4

It‘s more Golden Kamuy. I‘m not going to tell you anything new here. You should watch Golden Kamuy. This is the perfect opportunity to get into it. It‘s a good series and Twin Engine, the noitaminA of our times, has announced they‘ll adapt the entire manga. We‘re close to the finish line anyway. There is one issue with this anime adaptation, namely that it‘s spread over so many years by now that it‘s admittedly easy to lose track of all the subplots and proceedings so far in what‘s essentially a multi-perspective thriller spanning across countless of episodes. So, once again, now‘s a good time to get started. As for season 4 itself, I‘d say it was a bit weaker than S3 but still a good affair. It certainly had a very special moment when characters started to wank-fight. Or maybe my mind just made that up. Then again, I don‘t think it did. It truly is a wonderful show. Good.

Hikari no Ou

This one is an actual novel adaptation. It‘s a dark fantasy story in the veins of Shin Sekai Yori with a very engaging world about people burning to death upon encountering fire and a looming threat in their world that feels somewhat reminiscent of Sekien no Inganock. Its scripts are written by Mamoru Oshii. The music in here is special as you‘d expect from Kenji Kawai. Its opening and ending are amazing, the latter being so good it’s astonishing. I‘m not sure if the director of True Tears and Violin no Hamelin Jiki accounts for much but woah, was this one‘s first episode well-directed. And well-written to boot. Atmosphere and ambition in spades. And then it all collapsed. The entire production fell apart. The direction stayed absent for the rest of the show, the animation and art went down the shitter so hard it‘s unbelievable, there even was a part in which the background art turned into smears and that is usually the only part that gets spared from all production disasters, the OST started being overbearing after four episodes and the writing turned into an incomprehensible mess of non-characters going from A to B to C MMO fetch quest-style only to get exposited at by even more boring characters about the various lore details of the world that had long since stopped doing anything. I haven‘t seen a show crash this disastrously since Wonder Egg Priority. This was essentially the last straw for me, this completely tipped me over to just watching the absolute bare minimum of seasonal output that this medium has to offer. In that sense, it was a valuable experience. Bad.

Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai Suru

I should have dropped this when I had the chance. This is a very corny light novel ripoff of Harry Potter. That is, by trying to be the same as something popular from outside the anime sphere, it ends up being something different within the anime sphere. Man, what a sad sentence. It did show some signs of improving in its mid run but that was not of longevity. The big issue here is that not only does it steal much from Harry Potter, it also does pretty much everything worse and there is very little appeal with the rest. It had an LGBT safe space amusingly however so at least that differs it from J.K. Rowling‘s output. Speaking of the writer, this one wrote Alderamin. That was the big part that kept me in here since I have fond memories of that one. The writing quality, however, did not transfer over. Sure, there are enough characters to find plenty of likable ones. That‘s this one‘s strongest suit. I also like how the first arc‘s antagonist, Milligan, carried over to the good side without losing any of her appealing traits from when she was still a villain. Too many anime mess that one up. Good voice, tights, hair that covers one eyes, smug, has and offers way more fun than the rest of the characters, she‘s what I like. But the plot. Goodness gracious, the plot. The main plot stops after 6 episodes. For the remaining 9 episodes, we deal with minor qualms and even ditch the school premise, which was one of the better parts of the show. At some point, they fight giant bees. Almost nobody dies even after being killed left and right. Nothing has been learnt, no experience was made, not a single statement about anything could be uttered. Why was this 15 episode long? What was accomplished during all this time? I just can‘t say. Bad.

Oooku

Oooku is the poorly animated adaptation of an award-winning manga about an alternative history in which most men in Japan died out from a pandemic and women had to take over the government, political and socioeconomical consequences following suit. It certainly is quite the ridiculous premise and sure enough, occasionally, it does feel a bit trashy and corny but in spanning through generations, it follows this premise very earnestly through the eyes of a monk to be force-wed to the ruler in a Shakespearean forbidden love story with all sorts of court intrigues. If nothing else, it‘s different from the onslaught of court anime I‘ve had to suffer through during the last few years. I swear, this might be the next isekai genre at this rate. Apothecary Diaries was so awful I dropped it after one episode. This one‘s better but not to the degree that it would ever reach the class of Genji Monogatari Sennenki. I do believe that it gets better as it goes on and find the consequences of storytelling spanning across many years to be cathartic to watch but way too often, it did remind me that I was watching a glorified soap opera and for as much buildup as there is, while I can give it credit for not shying away from killing its characters throughout the passage of time, they oftentimes get discarded with so little fanfare it makes me wonder if the buildup was even worth it. When your political love story crossing a decade has little more to say than “Well, that was interesting“, I can‘t help but wonder if something like a movie of the calibre of The Age Of Innocence had a more decisive and concise message in less runtime. Still, we get so little that differs from the masses that this one still positively stands out. Decent.

Pluto

For how long has this been in the making? I remember when Maruyama talked about wanting to make it. I think that must have been a decade ago. Back when my old blog was still around perhaps even. I wasn‘t even a student back then. Anyway. It finally happened. And instead of being a proper TV anime, ended up on Netflix, so it could immediately fizzle out and not generate any buzz, succumbing into silent irrelevance. There is something profoundly wrong about all of this. Well, it is an adaptation of Urasawa‘s second-best work to date but I‘ve grown wary of his simple-minded preachiness and cliffhanger baiting over the years and revisiting the writing of Pluto very much confirmed his overly simplistic and morally patronizing tendencies all the more. The rest is pretty fine if you ask me but it‘s at the end where those lesser aspects manifest the most. As for the audiovisuals… was this really necessary? The music is utterly forgettable. This has none of Master Keaton‘s or Monster‘s heavy hitters. The same can be said for the visuals for the most part, which fail to evoke any atmosphere. Garish color choices and CG being smeared over Shinya Ohira cuts (!) are one issue, every single episode being handled by multiple episode directors, storyboarders and animation directors destroy any coherent vision as well. The first episode looks by far the best, the others… vary strongly. It still ends up looking above average for the sakuga cuts but Pluto was produced 100% outsourced to other studios, small and Korean ones included so once again, it misses any of the audiovisual cohesion of Master Keaton and Monster. I know this is a lot of complaining about a Pluto adaptation that is decent enough but for me, it was really hard to not see what I‘m missing out on after a decade of expecting simply better. Is it still by far one of the best anime of the year and should you watch it? Of course. This is not even a question. Compared to the horseshit that comes out nowadays, this is a blessing. Good.

Tengoku Daimakyou

I own a couple of manga volumes of this but forgot about the plot so the anime‘s existence was quite helpful. The original author is certainly quite prolific, being the one behind SoreMachi, the best anime comedy to date as far as I‘m concerned. I think this was good? Certainly an improvement over the manga, in large parts due to the staff. The directing and animation in here add a lot to the manga‘s very simplistic and scribly nature. The story itself is decent enough, following two kids on their roadtrip with a specific destination in grizzly adventures in which people get sliced up by monsters or other people. There‘s certainly always something going on, which is rare for anime. It feels somewhat comparable to the 12 or so volumes I‘ve read of Eden: It‘s An Endless World, albeit obviously nowhere near as good or ambitious. I‘ll give it that the idea of its dual plot following both the duo of the present and the kids in the orphanage trying to make sense of their world in the past was a very good idea though. All in all, this is just an anime with a really solid performance on every front coming together, elevating the source material quite a bit, even if some subplots were entirely too heavy-weight to be finished with the conclusion of “So yeah, that just happened“ and the story just kind of meanders into an absolute non-conclusion. Good.

Undead Girl Murder Farce

This one is an actual murder mystery series novel adaptation. Yes, novel, not light novel. It‘s helmed by Hatakeyama, one of the best and most versatile directors of the industry from Kaguya-sama and Rakugo fame. The anime was superbly ahead in production as indicated by the trailers. Several of the industry‘s best directors have contributed to directing and storyboarding. The soundtrack is quite good. Noboru Takagi, who has some of the more prolific adaptations under his belt and wrote C, which I loved, was in charge of the series composition. They even brought back the industry‘s best writer, Chiaki Konaka (Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain), for the adapting of the source material‘s London arc after 15 (!) years of absence from anime. Much like Hikari no Ou, this was too good on paper to be true. Yet unlike Hikari no Ou, this actually was that good. Fun, memorable characters all across the board enrich exciting adventures that combine detective mystery with fantasy action, it is an absolute joy to watch these people and the presentation is an utter gift, the directing in here is clever, ambitious and innovative and by far the best I have seen in years, this is without competition the classiest anime for lack of a better description since ACCA, almost everything in its presentation just works out perfectly, you have Aleister Crowley snipping people into flames, three highly competent fighters duke it out in mid-air as the moon behind illuminates them, everything in here is cool and clever and features all that‘s strong about anime as a medium, all kinds of trickery is employed among a varied, competent cast, there‘s the directing being equally creative with shots and scene transitions and whatnot, the sheer imagination and competency that went into this is marvelous. Would this anime not have worked if not for the talented staff? No doubt. But this is where the stars aligned. In a year where almost everything is just derivative content, it‘s a pleasure to see something that is just good on every single level because it takes the effort to go the extra mile. Man, do I miss this show. Very Good.

Vinland Saga Season 2

Some stories need a sequel, some stories don‘t need a sequel. With Vinland Saga, I believe it really could have gone either way. Sometimes it‘s the sequel that answers the question if there really was a need for a continuation to the cutoff point or not. With Vinland Saga S2, it‘s very evident it didn‘t need a sequel. On paper, it deconstructs Thorfinn‘s violent way of life by having him learn valuable lessons on a farm about how to live life properly. In practice, however, these are just very banal (slavery is bad, war is bad, trauma is bad) and do not have anywhere enough to say to fill out two seasons as the preaching gets heavier and messier by the episode. This is not a character piece or a work of great intellectual insight, folks. Whatever it has to say about pacifism is so utterly idiotic and poorly thought out you couldn‘t ever apply it to any real world conflict. None of it has wit or brevity. If you want a somewhat naive claim for pacifism, watching The Grand Illusion will give you more to say and think about within a significantly more constrained time frame. I find it amusing that people will tell you this is the season that filters out the fighting shounen fans, considering all this season does is shout fighting shounen platitudes at you about how fighting is bad and peace is good. If anything, Vinland Saga S2 does not add complexity but strips itself bare of any and degenerates into overly simplistic, cartoonish posturing. Now that‘s a lot of criticism for an anime that‘s still among the better ones of the year but I find the overall reception to this under-intellectual, over-moralizing tripe to be baffling at best and worrisome at worst and the downfall of quality in writing from the first season is palpable. Mind you, there is still some Vinland Saga goodness in here, the visual execution actually has some high points this time and every now and then, there is a rewarding moment that feels thoroughly cathartic and, on rare occassions, makes the central themes of this one work but for the most part, I have nagging suspicions that from now on, we will see The Adventures Of Thorfinn The Non-Lethal Magical Kung-Fu Fighter Preaching Hippie One-Liners To The Ghastly Vikings. And so, Vinland Saga turns into more of the same. Decent.

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Best Opening Of The Year: I wanna say Magical Destroyers but my heart goes to Undead Girl Murder Farce‘s.
Best Ending Of The Year: Hikari no Ou, for reminding me what could have been.
Best Animation Of The Year: Well, I‘ve only seen 9 anime and am not a sakuga glutton so my vote goes to Tengoku Daimakyou.
Best Directing Of The Year: Undead Girl Murder Farce, it‘s not even close.
Best Writing Of The Year: See above.
Best Anime Of The Year: See above.
BEST GIRL Of The Year: Milligan-sempai, aaaaaah…
Come To Think Of It…: I‘m not sure if I‘ve finished a single backlog anime last year.
Best Idea I‘ve Had: I bought a Steam Deck to read visual novels in Japanese.
Best Game Of 2023: I played three action games, all of which were a 5/10. Does it even matter?
Greatest Discovery I‘ve Made Last Year: Those Takeshi Kitano x Joe Hisaishi movies are very, very special.
Question Of The Day: Will Twin Engine ever return to producing first seasons of something?
Why In The World…: … haven‘t you read Sekien no Inganock yet?
Monkey‘s Paw Of The Year: Wishing for a Megumi no Daigo anime did not include garbage pacing and nearly endless recaps.
Holy Shit, It Finally Happened: THEY ANNOUNCED A MAHOIKU RESTART ANIME AAAAAAAAH-

I swear, if that MahoIku Restart anime gets the monkey paw treatment as well, I will riot…